Each month, many funny videos are posted to every corner of the internet — from the platform formerly known as Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, TikTok, and sometimes other weird places we’ll have trouble embedding. Because you’re busy living your life, you might miss some of these funny videos and feel left out when others bring them up in conversation. Well, worry not! We’re here to make sure you’re not listening in on conversations but leading them … as long as those conversations are about funny internet videos. Here are our favorite comedy shorts of the month.
“Asian Dad Cam: Outlet Mall,” by Asian Verified (Michael Wong)
@asianverified Black Friday Dads are built differenr 💪
♬ original sound - asianverified
Who would’ve thought that describing bad dad fashion would be, in and of itself, a high art? Michael Wong is blazing new trails with his encyclopedic knowledge of leisurewear and his pinpoint-accurate descriptions of Asian father fads no other would ever think to codify. Check out his page for a treasure trove of delights.
“Attempting to Riff With My Therapist,” by Bri Gipson
@brigipson Therapist needs therapy after this 🥴 #riffsession #riffqueen #cringe #therapy #jokes
♬ original sound - bri gipson
If you’re not making your therapist deeply uncomfortable, you’re not really doing therapy at all. Bri Gipson understands this and serves up a hilarious assembly of herself, in therapy, being … real. Hopefully you can handle it.
“Caught Using the Handicap Stall,” by Dino Archie
Here comedian Dino Archie serves up an incomparable brand of crisp, hilarious truth. If you’ve been waiting to hear a funny man’s takes on everything from X-Men sucking dick to why Black people don’t give a fuck about appearing in Lord of the Rings, you are very much in luck.
“Chemistry Test,” by Tim Barnes, Jim Fagan, and Andrew Sanford
Switching between first-person and found footage, this inventive short centers on an actor (Tim Barnes) who has been cast in a CW vampire show and has to come to a casting office to do chemistry reads with potential cast mates. His extremely and increasingly personal reasons for rejecting the vast majority of the nearly-identical actresses reading to be his co-star turn the atmosphere of the office into a claustrophobic, passive-aggressive nightmare.
“I Know Where to Look for the Assassin of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare,” by Dan Carney
In one of the more topically specific riffs on the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, Dan Carney lampoons the video of Riley Walz showing how his daily scrubbing of CitiBike data identified the bike purportedly used by the assassin to escape the crime scene, info that later proved to be irrelevant to the manhunt. Carney manages to get an Interstellar riff in there too, somehow.
“Luigi Mangione (Goodfellas),” by Nate Meeker
Nate Meeker has gone too far. Look, we don’t endorse any of the pro-murder bullshit trafficking its way around the internet right now; it’s deplorable. With that said, the Luigi Mangione Goodfellas parody is pretty boundary-pushing, and we owe it to our readers to serve them up the rawest product we can find. Plus, Meeker’s Liotta impression is transcendent.
“Saint Tony,” by Felipe Di Poi
“The Temptation of Saint Anthony meets Reddit” is how Felipe Di Poi pitches his newest animated short. This logline doubles as a little window into and summary of what makes him such a special filmmaker; there are few others to which this combination would naturally occur. Saint Tony follows a monk-like shut-in reframing modern internet isolation in profound religious terms. Soon, Tony and his incredibly elastic face are letting a vaping angel crash indefinitely on his couch, performing posting miracles, and wandering a modern hellscape that makes Beau Is Afraid look like … like something more chill.
“Traveling Man: A Fable,” by Graham Mason
Graham Mason is one of our favorite artists here at this column, both for his own work on gleefully mundane and surreal shorts and features, and for being a steward of greatness for recent independent films like Good One and Dad and Step Dad. His new short, Traveling Man, sees him teaming up with Eric Rahill as a man enjoying his lunch in the park who encounters an extremely friendly stranger (Brad Howe) with an unusual set of intuitive skills. Their encounter descends into frightening Mephistophelian bargains and such, but each time you think you’ve locked into this short’s patterns, it is several delightful steps ahead of you.
“The Woman in 12 Days of Christmas,” by Alise Morales
Morales is so skilled at placing people in unusual circumstances that they desperately hope end up being normal, if only because it means their day and life won’t be screwed up quite as much. This video, in which she portrays the narrator of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” is a perfect example. Her mounting frustration as her carol-inspiring boyfriend keeps bringing birds into their apartment strikes a perfect note of earnest relatability. It never feels like easy potshots at unusual, archaic lyrics. You will actually leave this video hearing the carol in a different, more annoyed tone from now on.
“Young Michael Jordan’s Next Door Neighbor,” by Tyler Foltz
No one thinks enough about stardom’s periphery — the troves of friends, family, and neighbors who were integral but unrecognized in so many stars’ stories of fame and fortune. Tyler Foltz shines a light on one of these forgotten heroes: a young Michael Jordan’s next-door neighbor. We never could’ve imagined how destructive the sounds of a bouncing basketball could be.
Like what you saw? Want to be in this monthly roundup? Show us your stuff!
Luke Kelly-Clyne is a co-head of HartBeat Independent and a watcher of many web videos. Send him yours at @LKellyClyne.
Graham Techler has contributed writing to The New Yorker and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Send him your videos at @gr8h8m_t3chl3r.
More From This Series
- The Best Comedy Shorts of April 2021
- The Best Comedy Shorts of March 2021
- The Best Comedy Shorts of September 2020